Women and Food Security (by Katherine Grechuta)

Food security, from the perspective of food aid and development initiatives is often not viewed from a gendered perspective. This paper hopes to enlighten readers as to why it is important to develop a gendered perspective of food security. However, before any further discussion on the topic can take place, it is important to first define the term as it fits into the working parenthesis of this paper. There are many competing definitions of food security, but this definition is by far the most comprehensive and workable:

A country can be said to be food secure when their food systems operate in such a way as to remove the fear that there will not be enough to eat. In particular food security will be achieved when the poor and vulnerable particularly women and children and those living in marginal areas have access to food they want.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates the number of food insecure individuals at around 800 million and in 1996 FAO reported that 70 per cent of the most vulnerable were women and girls. FAO statistics make it clear that any serious discussion about food security, including development projects, policy making and eventually its resolution, must factor in gender as a fundamental criterion. Women have been made the most susceptible by a number of structural barriers which are often perpetuated by cultural practices and beliefs, evident in limited access to resources, culminating in exclusion from processes such as decision making bodies. On the one hand, the irony is that food insecurity is gendered but the proposed solutions ‘genderless’, on the other, the relationship women have with food, including preparation and family nutrition, make the household the perfect entry point for policy makers and non-governmental organizations. Hence, a gendered perspective is crucial to the success of any policy, development project and all other efforts seeking to address food insecurity in a meaningful, empowering and long term way.

Structural barriers include exclusion from and limited access to land, education, information, credit technology and decision-making bodies. In fact, women receive approximately 5 per cent of extension resources and Kotze points out that the extension services offered to women “are often ineffective and inappropriate”. The problem of this situation is twofold: while access to land, education and especially credit are crucial to improving food security, the few formal channels which do exist that would allow women to change their situation, women are frequently grossly under-represented, so it is difficult for women to affect change when the few formal channels established to do so are closed off. Cooperatives, to which membership is based on land holdings, often serve a representative role when it comes to policy making. Furthermore, in many parts of the developing world access to land spells out access to loans as land retains collateral value. Farmers are forced to take out loans until harvest in order to acquire the agricultural technology necessary to produce a yield. The problem is of a cyclical nature, land owners, in turn, are able to retain memberships in rural organizations such as cooperatives which provide important access to other resources like credit, information, training and support services. Therefore, the act of denying women access to land means that they are excluded on a multitude of levels, increasing their chances of being impoverished and making them susceptible to food insecurity.

As already pointed out earlier, the irony of gender stereotypes dictates that women have a special relationship to food; hence, they make the majority of decisions regarding food within the household. As women are most likely responsible for feeding the family on a daily basis, it will be they who allocate resources accordingly and make crucial decisions about the family’s nutrition. This intimate relationship is seldom taken into account and its possibilities left unexplored as long as the realm of food security remains gender insensitive. Women’s access to income and their role in the household as primary decision makers on expenditures related to food translates directly into improved household nutrition; women tend to spend a proportionately higher amount of their income on food for the family than men. This, of course, is not synonymous with men caring less for their families than women, it is merely stating that women have different priorities when it comes to provision for the family. The problem, however, is that the domestic sphere is where important decisions about nutrition and resource allocation take place, whereas policy regarding food is often made at the national level, leaving the two disjointed. Furthermore, the household tends to be the hardest to penetrate, as it has its own internal power struggles and pre-existing hierarchies, leaving it seemingly out of the reach of the public realm.

Finding ways to engage women in processes regarding food are worth the pursuit. Women produce between 60 to 80 per cent of all work related to food production in Sub-Saharan Africa alone, performing the majority of household tasks including the collection of firewood, water and food preparation. Other projects undertaken by women in order to increase the amount of food for subsistence have been home gardens. The impact of home gardens on the household are astounding: Indonesian home gardens provide roughly 20 per cent of household income and account for nearly 40 per cent of domestic food supplies, carrying between 18 and 57 varieties of plants. For women, food can be viewed not only as something they consume, but in turn food consumes the majority of their day.

On a logistical note, many problems concerning women and food security continue to go unnoticed, as methods of data collection tend to neglect the importance of gender. In addition, surveys and censuses only count paid labour, whereas much of women’s work continues to be unpaid and takes place within the realm of the household. Although women’s contribution to the household economy cannot be captured in dollars and cents, it is undeniably a vital contribution. Development project leaders, policy makers and other interested parties need to adopt a gendered perspective, which will make clear to them its necessity and produce the realization that women need to have equal opportunity with men to own land, the importance of tailoring agricultural services to women, and the provision of better employment and income earning opportunities as the key to improvements.

Suggestions and solutions must interact on a local and ideological level. Locally women are encouraged to adopt multiple livelihood strategies, while ideologically we are urged to realize that women are not a homogenous group and one overall solution will not universally enhance women’s capabilities. Although it continues to go unrealized, there is much power in women’s hands to change the world we live in, once they have the equal opportunity and necessary access to resources to do so. Fighting the global chain of command may be one of the hardest battles we undertake, but the rewards at the end of the struggle are well worth the fight and the consequences may surprise even the toughest critic. Adopting a gendered perspective and giving women the recognition they deserve needs to be the starting point, it is only logical while the benefits of doing so are obvious.

Sources

Atkins, P.J. and I.R. Food in Society: economy, culture and geography. New York: Arnold, 2001.

Esterik, P.V. “Right to food; right to feed; right to be fed. The intersection of women’s rights and the right to food.” Agriculture and Human Values, June, 1999, Vol. 16, 2 (June 1999): 225-232.

“Food for All.” Food and Agriculture Organization. 1996. 1 January 2005. <http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/DOCREP/x0262e/x0262e00.htm>.

Gladwin, H.C., et al. “Addressing Food Security in Africa via multiple livelihood strategies for women farmers.” Food Policy 26, 2 (April 2001): 177-207.

Kotze, D.A. “Role of women in the household economy, food production and food Security: Policy Guidelines.” Outlook on Agriculture 32, 2 (June 2003): 111-121.

Oniang’s, R., and E. Mukudi. “Nutrition and Gender.” Nutrition: A Foundation for Development. Geneva: ACC/SCN, 2002.

The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization, 2003.

“Women: The key to Food Security.” Food and Agriculture Organization. 1 January 2005. <http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/x0171e/x0171e00.htm>.

[ issue contents ] [ fmm home ] [ send feedback ]